The present invention relates to a cooling technique and an information processing apparatus and particularly to a technique effectively adapted to a technique for cooling a space-saving type personal computer, or the like.
For example, with the advance of semiconductor techniques or the like, performance of a microprocessor used in a personal computer or the like has been improved remarkably. Particularly, a product with an operating frequency of the level of GHz has been used widely.
On the other hand, with the users' requirement for space saving and with reduction in cost of a liquid-crystal display, a so-called notebook type portable personal computer which has a liquid-crystal display and a body foldably connected to each other by a hinge has come into wide use. Moreover, an integral display type desktop personal computer which has a personal computer body integrated with the back or lower portion of a liquid-crystal display has come into wide use.
When a high-performance microprocessor with the level of GHz is mounted in such a space-saving type personal computer to provide the personal computer as a product, one of technical problems is means how to cool the microprocessor (to radiate heat from the microprocessor).
It is heretofore known that a cooling fan is disposed near the microprocessor or in a part of a housing so that the cooling fan forcedly generates an air stream passing through the microprocessor portion to radiate heat.
In the air-cooling system using such a fan, however, heat radiation has become insufficient because a large amount of heat is sent out when the existing high-speed microprocessor with the level of GHz is in operation. If heat radiation is to be made forcedly, a large-sized fan is required. There arises another technical problem in increase of the fan size and the housing size, increase of power consumption, increase of noise, or the like.
In such a space-saving type personal computer, there are sale points in small size, low noise, low power consumption, etc. Hence, increase in size of the housing, increase in power consumption and increase in noise as described above is a large technical problem against producing a space-saving type personal computer.
Therefore, it has been conceived that a liquid-cooling type cooling system using liquid as a thermal medium to thereby make it possible to achieve a large cooling capacity is employed in the conventional information processing apparatus.